How well do the tales in this volume explicate this theme? As usual,
some are more effective than others. At the top of my list is Preston
Avery's amazing “Won't Last the Week”. The narrator meets the
woman of his dreams at a party. They spend the night on the beach, so
entranced by one another that they forget to exchange phone numbers.

She isn't skinny like the girls I usually go for, like my ideal “on
paper” woman, but curved and soft and she fits me just right. Her
breasts are big with a delicious slope to them, and I know they will
overflow my grasp. I could bury my face in the valley between them
and never come up for air. I could have seconds and thirds and
fourths of her and die a gluttonous happy man. She does everything I
lead her into. I don't ask – words are still lost to us. The first
time I lower one of my hands to those gorgeous mounds, hidden between
a thin blue cotton shirt, she doesn't protest of push me away- she
arches into me, into my touch, and makes the most beautiful noise in
her throat. That moment, those moments, are all that I can feel. The
future is as unreal to me as a unicorn on the planet Saturn. That
place where names and phone numbers matter is at least a world away.

As the week goes on, dreams and fantasies of the lost woman consume
the narrator's life. Will he somehow manage to find her? Or will he
go mad with need and frustration? The beautiful urgency of this story
left me in wet wonder.

Another highly apt contribution is Kissa Starling's cautionary tale
“Blue Balls”. A young man too busy with his career to pursue a
relationship receives a pair of mysterious blue balls from the gypsy
he consults for advice. The balls provide instant orgasms, of such
intensity and delight that the protagonist soon finds himself
neglecting all other aspects of his life in the quest for ever
increasing pleasure.

In Giselle Renarde's exquisite “The Girl on Your Skin”, a lesbian
couple with an explicitly open relationship discover that the scent
of a casual lover on one of their bodies creates a virtual
three-some, kindling a whole new kind of desire.

The editor's own contribution, “Famous Last Words”, is notable
for its clever and insightful portrayal of “break up sex”. It's
not necessary to love someone, or even to like them, to be swept away
by lust for their bodies. In fact, one of the aspects of this entire
book that I particularly liked was the fact that not all its stories
end happily. Stupendous orgasms are not necessarily the key to long
term happiness.

On the other hand, they're not something to be rejected, either.

Given the title, I expected Ms. Brown's story to be the last in the
collection. However, that place belongs to Annabeth Leong's
incredibly perverse “Objects of Desire”. Once again, Ms. Leong
articulates sexual complexities that few other authors would even
recognize. This tale of shame, need and kitchen utensils is one of
the kinkiest – and most insightful – things I've read in months.
It made me squirm, which I have to believe was the author's
intention.

I've only mentioned the stories that particularly grabbed me, but
overall, Ms. Brown has assembled a solid collection of erotic
fiction, with considerable diversity in tone, content and gender
pairings. I believe this may be her first time editing an anthology.
She can afford to be proud of the result.